He recited to himself, But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.
“DADDY, DO MY ashes look okay? I told Grandpa to do a good job,” my five-year-old, Chrissy, said as we sat by the window inside the crowded Starbucks at 93rd and Broadway.
We’d just dropped off her siblings at school after church. Chrissy, who was in kindergarten now, luckily didn’t have to go in until noon. In our big family, one-on-one time was an extremely rare commodity. Not even a nasty killing spree would make me miss our Wednesday-morning Starbucks date.
“I don’t know. Let me see,” I said, reaching across the table, holding her tiny chin in my hand as I peered at her. I couldn’t help but kiss her elflike nose. “They look great, Chrissy. Grandpa did fine. And they go really well with your hot chocolate mustache.”
As she went back to her drink, I looked at the long line by the pastry case. Waiting for their morning fix of Seattle ’s main export were nannies with infants, tired- looking construction workers, and tired-looking men and women dressed in business clothes. Maybe ten percent of them, along with one of the baristas, had ashes.
I wondered with a cold chill if it was in the killer’s mind to shoot people who had ashes today. That he was going to do something was a given. Every indication was that today was the day. The only questions left were where and how.
I rubbed my eyes before I lifted my coffee and took a large gulp. My blood caffeine level had hit record highs in the past couple of sleepless days, but it couldn’t be helped. After last night’s end-of-day task force meeting, I’d spent much of the night Googling everything I could on Ash Wednesday.
Ash Wednesday was one of the most solemn days in the Catholic liturgical year. It was a day for contemplating one’s transgressions.
But whose transgressions was the killer trying to point out with the slayings? The dead kids’? Society’s? His own?
I caught my ash-streaked, mournful reflection in the plate glass.
Well, I was certainly stewing in my own lapses this morning, I thought, looking away. For not already putting an end to this horrible case.
As Chrissy played peekaboo with a neighboring toddler in a stroller, I checked my cell phone for the millionth time to see if I had missed any messages. I winced when only my Yankees-logo wallpaper appeared again. Emily had put an incredible rush on the print, but there was still no word.
I spun my phone on the chessboard tabletop as I looked out the window down Broadway. I could feel the moments slipping away from me, and there was nothing I could do.
Where and how? I thought. Where and how?
Chapter 69
MY CASE-DISTRACTED MIND still hadn’t come a hundred percent back online as I stepped with Chrissy into my apartment ten minutes later. Otherwise, I would have checked my caller ID before I snapped open my phone.
“What’s the story?” I yelled into it.
“What story?” my grandfather Seamus said. “Actually, who cares? Did you tell her yet?”
“Tell who what?”
“Mary Catherine, ya eedjit! See, I knew you’d forget. And with MC in such a riled knot of late. Does the song ‘Happy Birthday’ ring a bell, Detective?”
“Holy sh-… ugar,” I said. “No. I forgot.”
Eedjit was right! I thought. I’d blown this one big-time. I could at least have brought her back a muffin or something. What would Mary Catherine throw out of mine next? I wondered. I needed to address the situation, and pronto. I heard the tea kettle start to boil in the kitchen. Maybe I still had a shot.
“I’m all over it, Father,” I said, hanging up.
Mary was taking a mug down from the cabinet just inside the kitchen door.
“Mary. There you are,” I said, surprising her with a hug.
“Happy birthday!” I said as merrily as I could and went to plant a kiss on her cheek.
But as it turned out, I was the one who got the surprise present.
Mary Catherine turned her head, and our lips locked. At first, I pulled back as if I’d been Tasered, but then, before I knew it, my hand found the back of her neck and we were, well, making out would be the exact expression.
Mary’s unheeded mug slid off the counter and shattered.
I guess you could call it pretty hot-and-heavy making out.
“Mary Catherine!” Chrissy called a second later just outside the kitchen door.
Mary almost broke my nose as she ripped herself away from me. Her face was at least twenty shades redder than her strawberry-blond hair. My face felt like it was on fire. I couldn’t seem to close my mouth.
“Goddamn you, Mike,” she said before she fled out the doorway. Was she crying? Why was she crying? I was having trouble enough breathing. I heard the hall bathroom door slam a second later.
I was still standing there, brain-locked and blinking, when Chrissy came in. “Where’s MC?” she said.
“I’m not sure. I broke a mug, Chrissy. Could you get me the dustpan?”
I WAS DOWN on my hands and knees, dazed and sweeping up, when my cell rattled.
“Hey, Mike,” Agent Parker said. “Get down here. I have news. I’m right outside your building.”
“Thank God,” I said, dumping the last of the shards into the garbage. “I mean, on my way!”
I quickly hollered, “I’m off to work, ’bye, Mary,” as I passed the still-closed bathroom door.
Was that the right thing to do? I wasn’t sure. I’d never made out with my kids’ nanny before.
I wiped the lip gloss off my chin in the elevator mirror on the way down to the street. Still tasting it, I pondered what the heck had just happened and how I felt about it.
Like I needed something else on my plate at this juncture.
“Goddamn you, Mike.”
Chapter 71
I CLIMBED INTO Emily’s double-parked Crown Vic. She was wearing a new white silk blouse and sleek beige skirt suit. With the case dragging on, she must have done some shopping, I realized.
Was it me, or was the blouse showing some pretty nice cleavage? I wiped my eyes. What the hell was happening to me?
“Feeling okay there, Mike?”
“Never better,” I said, smiling. “What’s up?”
Emily handed me a folder.
“We finally got the toxicology report back on the ashes found on the first victim, Jacob Dunning. Are you familiar with X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy?”
“Had one six months ago,” I said, nodding. “Doctor said I’m as clean as a whistle.”
“Listen closely, wiseass,” Emily said, ignoring my acerbic wit. “Basically, individual elements reflect X-ray light in different patterns. They ran the ashes through the machine, and it turns out most of it is regular cigarette tobacco. The twist is that they found traces of some very interesting substances as well that came from the killer’s sweat.”
“Like what kind of substances?” I said.
Emily lifted a clipboard.
“Several amphetamines and a drug called… Iressa. It’s a chemotherapy drug for lung cancer.”
I rubbed my face as I nodded.
“Hey, good work,” I said. “I’ll get Schultz to contact Sloan-Kettering and the other cancer centers and check out their patients. It’s starting to make a little more sense now in terms of motive. If this guy is terminal, maybe he made out some psycho bucket list. Maybe this is his way of going out with a bang.”
“Funny you should say bang,” Emily said, pointing to a name on the fax sheet. “Because the drugs aren’t the worst of it. There was evidence of something called pentaerythritol. It’s found in plastic explosives, Mike.”
